Before becoming a successful author, Bloom worked full-time as a psychotherapist, and numerous critics have pointed out that her understanding of human foibles and quirks and her respect for the power of love shines through in her fiction. Bloom's collection of short stories and her first published book, 1993's Come to Me, was noted for its sensitivity as well as its collection of characters, many of whom suffered from some kind of pathology. Her stories focus on, among others, a transvestite, a schizophrenic, a voyeur, a delusional wife, an incestuous relationship, and a pedophiliac; as Jeanne Schinto writes in her review in Belles Letters, Bloom writes about characters who "exhibit all the symptoms for which people might seek psychotherapy." Indeed, therapists appear in a number of Bloom's stories. However, as Robert Phillips also notes in The Hudson Review, Bloom is "comfortable with the odd, the perverse...